


Like the Back of the Hand

by thedevilsfoot



Category: Sherlock Holmes & Related Fandoms, Sherlock Holmes - Arthur Conan Doyle
Genre: Hurt/Comfort, M/M, Mutual Pining, Post-Reichenbach, hand holding, i have no idea how to tag this, i just needed to scratch a very specific itch....
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-06-10
Updated: 2020-06-10
Packaged: 2021-03-03 19:07:17
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,520
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/24640582
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/thedevilsfoot/pseuds/thedevilsfoot
Summary: "You really think you could do your usual trick just by looking at someone's hands, old man?""Most certainly."Holmes's eyes twinkled at me challengingly from behind a puff of tobacco smoke."Perhaps you'd care to demonstrate?" I asked, playing along."My dear Watson, I would be delighted."Holmes and Watson both try their hands at some deduction.
Relationships: Sherlock Holmes/John Watson
Comments: 18
Kudos: 117





	Like the Back of the Hand

In all my years of living with Sherlock Holmes, his conversations never became dull or predictable. He loathed small talk, preferring to expound upon whatever subject was currently on his mind like a professor giving a lecture, whether that was crime or music or art or, most unfortunately, the many failings of my little pamphlets. But sometimes, his mind seemed to work a bit faster than his mouth, and we would leap from one subject to another until neither of us could remember how or why we got to talking about something.

On one such day, sitting in our armchairs by the fire on a cool winter's night, a letter from our friend Dr. Mortimer prompted a discussion about about the failings of phrenology and other pseudosciences until we landed upon palmistry.

"Pah," Holmes sniffed derisively, puffing on his greasy old clay pipe. "Complete and utter rot."

"You aren't a spiritualist, Holmes?" I said in mock surprise, grinning.

"Certainly not, and I should hope that you never fall for such an obvious grift. You've already seen the kind of effect I can produce simply by leaving out the central inferences in a chain of deductions, and presenting someone with only the starting point and the end point. It is the same concept, my dear fellow, though certainly more dishonest in its application."

"As opposed to you, who are always honest?"

Holmes bit back a smile, fingers tapping against the bowl of his pipe. "Well, perhaps not always. But to my credit, I could have been far _more_ dishonest. It's a lucky thing that I never was tempted to try such a grift myself, as I have no doubt that I would have been quite good at it."

"Really, now?" I said, with some amusement. "You fancy yourself a fortune teller?"

"Humph. Those 'fortunes' are nothing but common sense dressed up to sound wise and mystical. Anyone could do it. I would simply have an advantage."

"I suppose you would. You could tell more from one brief glance at your client than any palmistry book can tell you."

"Oh, no, Watson, the hand is more than enough. I shouldn't waste my energy on the rest."

I snorted at him, leaning back in my chair with arms folded. "You really think you could do your usual trick just by looking at someone's hands, old man?"

"Most certainly."

Holmes's eyes twinkled at me challengingly from behind a puff of tobacco smoke.

"Perhaps you'd care to demonstrate?" I asked, playing along.

"My dear Watson, I would be delighted." He leapt from his chair, clearly eager for a chance to occupy his mind. He knelt down beside me and held out a hand.

“May I?”

I smiled and stretched out my hands. Holmes’s eyes took on that familiar dreamy gaze as he took my left hand in both of his and began his examination. He bent quite close over my palm, his fingers restless in their strange ministrations. He bent and stretched my fingers, one by one, examining the nails closely and feeling for callouses. Then, he moved down to spread my palm and run his fingers lightly over the skin. Once satisfied, he turned my hand over and once again bent and stretched my fingers, though this time he seemed to be observing the muscles and tendons of the hand rather than the fingers.

But his gaze lingered on my left ring finger, where anyone could still plainly see the indentations from my old wedding ring. He must have felt me tense up, because he quickly resumed his examination elsewhere and I breathed in quiet relief.

After feeling my knuckles, his hand drifted down to my wrist, as though to feel my pulse. After a minute or two of this, he let go of my left hand, which dropped into my lap unexpectedly, and I realized that I had relaxed my arm completely in his grip.

He repeated the process for my right hand, occasionally letting out little hums of interest or satisfaction. Throughout the entire examination, I thought with some surprise that although he seemed to completely forget my presence and regard my hands as if they were some fascinating piece of evidence, his touch was incredibly gentle. I had noticed many times before the light, careful touch with which he handled all precious and interesting things, but it was quite something else to experience it. I felt oddly soothed as he traced the creases of my palms and massaged my fingertips. 

And then, suddenly, his hands pulled away, leaving the skin of my palms strangely sensitive from overstimulation. 

“Well, Watson,” he sighed, scratching his head, “I’m afraid that I cannot tell you very much that I did not already know after all these years. A stranger would have provided a much better demonstration.”

“Then pretend that I am one,” I smiled, “and I shall pretend to be impressed. I’d still like to know what sort of stories my hands have to tell.”

A smile played at the corners of Holmes’s mouth. “Well then, sir, I shall start by saying that you are a doctor—”

“Good heavens!” I cried exaggeratedly. “How _could_ you know that?”

Holmes rolled his eyes, but was still smiling as he continued. “Your hands are extraordinarily well cared for, which suggests that they are essential in your work, but that work is not manual labor. Your nails are kept trimmed to the quick and yet you still clean under them frequently— so frequently that I can see traces of you having dug too far and drawn blood fairly recently. Your skin is also quite dry in places, most certainly from having to constantly wash your hands. The great pains to keep your hands clean imply a medical profession, which becomes a certainty when I observe the callouses between your fingers consistent with holding a surgeon’s knife, and the scar on your thumb that is likely from holding the knife a little too close to the blade and paying dearly for it. The scar is very old and faded, which suggests to me that it is from the early days of your medical training, and that you have been in practice for some time since.”

As he spoke, Holmes paced around the room, puffing thoughtfully on his pipe. I knew him to sometimes have trouble slowing down his thoughts enough to organize them coherently, and that pacing helped him focus. “That you were an army doctor is very likely from your left hand,” he said slowly. “You use it for firearms, likely because you are right handed and, as a surgeon, cannot afford to risk the recoil injuring your dominant hand.”

“How do you know I use it for firearms?”

“There are traces of a nodule at the base of your first finger of your left hand, suggesting that you once had a rather nasty case of trigger finger. Another reason why you were wise not to use your right hand for firearms, as that would have severely damaged your ability to wield a knife.”

I laughed ruefully. “You’re right, though that happened after I came back to London, old fellow. After you—”

_After you died, I never touched my revolver for three years. When you came back, I never felt at ease without it, and so I got trigger finger._

The words died in my throat. Holmes eyed me curiously, but it wasn’t long before his expression clouded, as though he could read my mind.

“Y-You were saying?” I said quickly, trying to smooth over my expression. “That can’t be all you got.”

Holmes opened his mouth as if to say something, then shut it again, apparently thinking better of it. When he continued his lecture, his voice was still just as level, but I noticed his hands had started to fiddle with his dressing gown pockets along with his pacing. 

“It would be a safe assumption that you are a writer,” he went on, “thanks to the callous on the second finger of your right hand, consistent with how you hold a pen rather than a knife.”

“Ah, but I’m a doctor, remember?” I chided him with a twinkle in my eye. “I could be an author of monographs, not popular literature.”

Holmes smiled. “You could, that’s true. But I’m afraid the notes that you’ve scribbled on the inside of your left shirt cuff in a burst of inspiration rather betray you.”

“Ha! I’d say that’s cheating, but I suppose it would be hard to miss with my hand right in front of your face.”

“Indeed.” He finally sat back down in his armchair, sighing a little. “Apart from that, I’m afraid I can’t deduce much thanks to your habit of washing your hands so frequently. Save that Thurston’s wife has finally decided to leave him.”

I stared in absolute shock. “Really, Holmes-!”

“No no, it is no indiscretion on your part,” Holmes assured me, “simply nosiness, perhaps, on mine. I have told you before how I noticed that you use chalk between your left forefinger and thumb when you play billiards with Thurston, yes? Well, last week you asked for the key to the drawer to fetch your pocketbook so that you could lend Thurston some money to take his wife to dinner. I can only assume that his little investment in South African securities went belly up and his wife was sore with him, and you, in your infinite kindness, tried to help him smooth it over, since you were wise enough not to invest but not quite convincing enough to talk _him_ out of it. Today, you came home from the club far later than usual, with chalk upon your left hand and a grave look on your face, and you have since been so preoccupied that you still have yet to wash off the chalk. I could only fear the worst for your friend Thurston. But you need not confirm or deny,” he added quickly, seeing my guilty countenance, “for I know that would put you in a false position. Forgive me, perhaps I should have kept that last deduction to myself.”

I should have scolded him, I knew, but there was one deduction that he _had_ kept to himself, and I could not help but think that it was a sign of his care for me that he would bring up Thurston's wife but not my Mary. Indeed, we never spoke of Mary.

I carried that grief alone.

“...It’s quite all right,” I sighed, pinching the bridge of my nose and trying not to think on such heavy things. “Let’s just not speak of it again.”

Holmes nodded, looking a little rueful. “Agreed.”

“Still,” I said thoughtfully, “aside from... well, that last thing, I do wonder if you would have been so confident in those deductions if you didn’t already know my history and habits, or if you weren’t working in reverse, intentionally or not.”

Holmes squinted at me across the fire. “It would be hard to say for sure, even for myself,” he admitted begrudgingly. “I have some difficulty retracing my steps, so to speak.”

“Well,” I suggested, suddenly feeling a bit mischievous, “there is one way to test it out.”

“Oh? And what might that be?”

“Why don’t you let me examine _your_ hands, and we’ll see how much I can pick up even without your great deductive power and just from knowing you well.”

Holmes’s eyes glittered with humor. “Interesting idea! Well, Watson, be my guest. You have said before that my trick is a very superficial one, perhaps this time you’ll land it.”

I clicked my tongue at the jibe, but we were still both smiling and chuckling as I crossed the room to sit on the arm of his chair. He held out his long, pale hands to me, and I took his left one, holding it close to my face as he had done with mine.

“You obviously work with chemicals,” I began, for I was more of the type to think aloud than to silently examine like Holmes. “You’ve got acid stains all over your hands, and traces of other recent chemical burns.”

“Excellent, Watson.”

“I keep telling you to wear gloves, Holmes.”

“Now, now, you are not a doctor at the moment, you are a detective.”

I sighed, making a mental note to badger him later. “...You play a string instrument of some kind,” I said, examining the tips of his fingers. “Here are callouses from the strings. And if you would give me your right hand—” He held it out to me, and I hummed with satisfaction. “Humph! Here is a bit of rosin on your thumb where it touches the hair of your bow. You are a violinist.”

“Or a cellist,” Holmes said demurely. “Or perhaps a viola player. Or—”

“All right, all right, you at least play some sort of bowing instrument, most _likely_ a violin.”

I turned his hand over and examined his knuckles closely, running my thumb over the roughened and calloused flesh. “Your knuckles have been severely tried. Either you are a boxer or you have a habit of getting yourself into trouble.”

“Which would be your guess?”

“Both,” I laughed.

Holmes grinned at me. “Maybe so.”

I resumed my examination, already a bit stumped for what else to look for. His hands were plenty scarred, but where he got each one from, heaven only knew. His finger tips bore the marks of him having drawn blood many times for his chemical experiments, his palms had undoubtedly been scratched up repeatedly from climbing up rough walls and rooftops and searching for clues in the dirt, and on the backs of his hands and even down his arms, I could see countless battle scars. 

One long scar across the back of his right hand I thought I recognized, courtesy of Joseph Harrison and his knife. As for the rest, I could not be sure which were from villains and which were from Holmes’s own carelessness.

To my surprise, when I glanced up at Holmes, his face was turned away, his eyes darting around the room, anywhere but at me. 

_He is more used to observing than being observed,_ I thought, suddenly feeling a little embarrassed for reasons that even I couldn’t explain. I remembered the soothing effect that his light touches had had on me, and tried my best to mimic them, gently stroking and massaging the skin as I examined, but it only seemed to make him even more tense, for I thought that I heard him swallow.

Strange.

“...You do not take particular care of your hands,” I said quietly. “Or rather, you take normal care of them, but not at all proportional to the ordeals you put them through. Which tells me that you are of an excitable sort of personality, throwing yourself head first into whatever you do with little thought for the strain it puts upon you.”

“Mm,” he hummed, still not looking at me. “Perhaps that is true.”

I turned his right hand back over, and spotted a particularly irregular scar across the top of his palm, as if he had torn the flesh on something. When I traced a light finger over it, he seemed to start, his hand jerking slightly in my grip.

When I looked up at him, though his face had gone quite blank and masked, I thought I saw traces of something like... guilt.

“...You seem to have had a real misadventure. I would wager your hand slipped while climbing something.”

“Oh, something like that.”

“Rock climbing, perhaps?”

There it was. His lips pursed just slightly, his brow twitched barely. But it was enough.

“...Perhaps,” he said softly.

For a while, we were both silent. Maybe he thought that I was still conducting my little investigation, or maybe he was waiting for judgment. For whatever reason, Holmes was quiet as I held his injured hand in mine and felt the sting of old wounds. All this time, and we still bore the marks of those three lonely years.

"...Well, old man," I finally said, patting his hand and releasing it, "I'm afraid that's all I can fairly deduce. Even when I first moved in, I couldn't peg you as a consulting detective."

Holmes smiled a little at that. "Well, to be fair, I _am_ the only one in the world. You would be hard pressed to figure it out."

"True," I laughed. "You are quite unique."

Again, he looked as if he wanted to say something, only to then change his mind. He puffed on his pipe in silence as I sat back in my chair and picked up a book from the side table, and for a while he remained silent, his expression obscured by the cloud of tobacco smoke. But I could see his hands, one tapping restlessly on his knee, the other clutching his pipe in his long, slender fingers.

_He has very lovely hands,_ I suddenly thought. I wasn't sure why I thought so, with how poorly he had treated them. But the thought came to me nonetheless. I felt my palms tingle again at the thought of his light, fleeting touches. Almost like those of a ghost.

I swallowed and looked back to my book, trying to keep such unpleasant thoughts at bay. Scarred we may have been, but we were both assuredly alive. By some miracle, I was here again in Baker Street, and I had held his hands and felt his pulse and seen the proof of his survival. 

Yes, that was the word. We had survived. And someday, I would let him examine all the scars upon my heart, and perhaps he would let me do the same.

And someday, I would tell him that all was forgiven. Someday, when it felt true.

Eventually, Holmes rose to go to bed, patting my shoulder as he passed. As fleeting as his touches normally were, I thought perhaps I only imagined his hand lingering for just a moment on my sleeve. 

I did not, however, imagine him lingering in the doorway. "Watson?" he said quietly, his back to me and one hand resting on the doorframe.

"Yes, Holmes?"

He still did not turn to face me as he spoke. "To tell the truth, Watson, there is much more to be deduced from a pair of hands in action than a pair of hands at rest."

"...You have made some other deduction."

"Yes."

It was a minute before he continued, but I waited patiently, for he seemed to be struggling to put it into words.

"That you are a doctor is obvious," he finally said, his voice oddly hesitant. "That you are a _good_ doctor and... and a good friend is even more so. You always examine me like a doctor, seeking to find what ails me and how to heal it. That is because you are kind at heart."

My heart swelled and ached. "My dear, dear Holmes..."

"I am afraid that I fall short in that respect," he continued quietly. "I examine things like problems to be solved and made sense of. I do not like to think of pain, because pain is senseless. And so I fear that I have treated yours like an inconvenience that will go away with time. It is not, and it will not."

The implied apology hung in the air like tobacco smoke. A lump rose in my throat at the sight of Holmes, his back small and rounded and his hand clinging tightly to the doorframe.

I stood and crossed the room until I was directly behind him, and I took his hand in mine. When I turned him around to face me, his face was pale and tight, as if he were waiting for it all to come crashing down around him – this illusion that everything was as it had always been, that he had not been dead to the world for three years, that my wife had not died in his absence, that there was nothing for me to forgive.

And so it did, but I knew that we would survive it. I took his other hand in mind, holding them both tightly.

"You examine me like I am the most interesting thing in all the world," I said softly. "I shall likely never understand why you chose me as a companion out of all the people in this city, but I will never be anything less than grateful. We have much to talk about, but I want you to know that I never once regretted any of it, and I never will. It is my greatest joy and privilege to be with you."

Holmes did not seem to have a response. He nodded tersely, his face still very stiff, but I thought that I felt his hands trembling in mine. I squeezed them, and he squeezed back. Proof of life. Proof of us.

We both lingered there for a long time. And feeling the warmth of his palms in mine, feeling it heal me, I thought once again, _His hands are lovely._

**Author's Note:**

> Thanks to the quarantine and spending a lot of time sick in bed recently, I've been making my way again through all the Holmes stories and rewatching the Granada show and just... I'm having a lot of feelings. This is actually my second time trying to write a Holmes story, the first and only other time being when I was like... thirteen or fourteen. It's been like ten years now and I've lost it somewhere but I figure what better way to make it up to my middle school Sherlockian self than to go all in and write some fanfic? Anyway, if you're reading this then thank you and I hope you enjoyed <3


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